Simon's Occasional China Blog

[SimonM]

Hey there. This is the start of my (undoubtedly sporatic) efforts to set up a Blog about my experiences in China with specific attention to martial arts. You will undoubtedly hear an occasional ESL related diatribe, joke or story though... If Gene thinks that because this will occasionally stray off-topic than I will happily move it. Otherwise proceed with foreknowlege that I am an ESL teacher and my daily life involves a lot of ESL things.

Anyways. Just to bring people up to speed.

I left Canada on June 18, 2005. I arrived in Beijing on June 20, 2005. I never left the airport until I embarked the outbound flight for Taiyuan that night. I arrived in Taiyuan very early in the morning June 21, 2005 and remained there for about three days. I had a very lovely hotel suite and really didn't leave the hotel without accompanyment. I was terribly jet lagged and a little bit nervous about launching myself from the safety and security of suburban Ontario into the vastness of China. I found the whole city to be absolutely confusing and was slightly concerned that I would get lost if I strayed too far from the hotel.

I arrived in Lishi on or about June 24, 2005. At that time my hopes of moving into my new home were dashed as it was remarkably filthy and the school wanted to clean it thoroughly before I moved in.

On either June 25 or 26 I moved into my new appartment. It was still pretty dirty but nowhere near unliveable. By this time my jet lag was pretty much entirely past and I was acclimatized to the 12 hour change in time.

I spent the next month learning my way around Lishi. Fortunately I had a guide, a bloke named Tom who was the out-going FT. He was a three and a half year veteran of ESL and was moving to Shenzen with his Chinese fiancee to start a new, much easier and better paid, job in a British school. However he still had a month and a half to go in Lishi when I arrived and we quickly became friends.

Tom told me that there was a PE teacher in the university who taught Gong Fu but he had sadly left for summer holliday.

I eventually bought a punching bag, a few martial arts weapons and some appropriate pants and began practicing my stuff outside of my flat. This attracted quite a crowd to say the least. Anyway, over the summer holiday I spent most of my time teaching ESL to middle school students and children to support myself until my first paycheck on Sept. 20. I might just make it too. I'm down to around 150 RMB right now...

The school year began on the first monday in September. I quickly met the school's Gong Fu coach, bought a punching bag and found out that I had to buy new shoes. Apparently Doc Martins were not appropriate footwear to practice Gong Fu outside!

Finding new shoes was a trick. I have large feet. Most people in China use the european size system for shoes. According to that system I'm a size 48 though even these are tight and if it were possible I would have shot for a size 50. Only one store in Lishi sold any shoes in size 48, they had one pair of a brand called CBA (chinese basketball association) I bought them.

My first class went very well. My legs are killing me and though I did not realize it at the time I also happened to be coming down with a cold so today I feel like absolute crap. A few problems and revelations from the first class:

Problem 1: I'm not a good runner. This is a self correcting problem as now that I have to run regularly as part of my training I will improve.

Problem 2: There are two classes of Gong Fu per week at the school and one of them conflicted with one of my (shudder) writing classes. Writing is my least favorite subject to teach, I'd rather teach culture, spoken english or (in my dreams) literature than have to slog my way through a million essays each week. A million essays that on average have only marginally better grammar, punctuation and spelling than many spewed forth by various semi-literate trolls on the fora. To my student's credit English is not supposedly their first language. For many it's their third behind pu tong hua and lishi hua.
However that problem was solved by shifting my friday writing class to tomorow afternoon, a minor change that the department was quite happy to do for me. I hope my students get the message. Fortunately the rumour has been refined to a true art form in small town China so as long as one person overheard our conversation I'm sure most of the school knows by now! ;)

Revelation 1: While the skinny as whip-cord and hyper-limber Chinese guys who take this class have an edge over me in the pretty low-stance department only a few aside from the instructor displayed any ability to apply maritial arts. As this is a sanshou class I hope that will change after a few of them have had some time in the ring. It will certainly change after a few of them have had some time in the ring with me!

Revelation 2: Just because you are chinese doesn't mean you automatically know the first thing about Gong Fu. Ok, a bit of a no-brainer, but stick with me. We were supposed to be doing a simple partner drill designed to work on balance, stability and hip flexibility. Each person was supposed to put both palms together and (starting from Ma Bu) rotate at the hip while thrusting the palms foreward and backward. My partner and I square up, settle into ma bu and begin. And he is thrashing and flailing about, he's leaning his full body weight into me, he's not in any sort of propper body alignment. I simply slip my thumb behind his hand and on one of his pushes I provide zero resistance and help him along... ever so slightly. He goes stumbling off to my left looking all confused. I try to explain to him in a halting combination of rudimentary english and pu tong hua what caused that to happen but I don't think we really communicate. We start again and he's flailing again and he's leaning again and his back is wobbling from rediculously leaned back to way too far foreward and I slip my thumb behind his hand again and give the smallest tug to the right and he goes staggering off to my right, keeping his feet mainly because I was holding his hands. Anyways this went on for a little while and eventually he began to get the idea (I think it helped when Sifu Zhang came along and explained things to him a bit) of how to balance a bit better but still... It shows what happens when somebody doesn't understand the difference between movie-fu and Gong Fu.

I am really looking foreward to Friday's class. I hope it's not too many classes before we do some rudimentary sparring but I am patient and can wait. And you never know. Mabey Mega Fist, his M8t Andy and Ashida Kim will show up at my doorstep with their Nunchucks and Judo Katanas and give me the match I offered them. ;)

More updates as they come.

PS: If you have anything to say regarding what I write here I love to talk but do me a favour and say it here! (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=631528#post631528) ;)

[SimonM]

So I am still down with a cold and had six hours of classes today so I didn't really do much Kung Fu related stuff but I don't know if I mentioned this before but I got my timetable sorted and Friday is now free... Thus the six hours of classes today.

Anyway, I was on the phone to my family back home and my mother was saying how people are always asking her how I handle the absence of free speech. I had just finished talking about how readily my students laugh, sincere mirth, not an embarassed laugh. Really they are a warm, happy bunch. This did not mesh with many North-Americans impressions of the "people trodden under the boot of the communist oppressor (insert T-Square or FLG reference here)".

My Mom said she usually tells these people, when they ask her "what about free speech" that she didn't think anybody really noticed. I went one step further and said "people here seem to speak pretty freely to me".

Seriously, even in Canada and the USA - two of the traditional bastions of "freedom of expression" we restrict what people can and can not say. Some of this is done through law, just see what happens if you say "I like Al Qaieda" in an airport. Some of this is done through less-formal channels. For instance people who suggest that Capitalism is not a good ideology are often marginalized as "crazy", "naiive", "hippies", etc.

In China there are also proscribed areas of conversation and un-proscribed areas of conversation. But just as most of us don't find it particularly restricting to not be allowed to pledge alleigance to known terrorist groups I think that the average Chinese person never really considers that their ability to say what they want to say is particularly curtailed.

Another thing, YES, China is an authoritarian country. It's ALWAYS been an authoritarian country - Communism didn't cause that... Mao didn't overthrow an egalitarian democracy to create the PRC. I think that the average college student percieves the CCP as having caused more good than harm over all. They have better health care, access to decent education and food is abundant. In general the people I have talked to seem to think that things are looking up.

If we accept as premises that:

1: Democracy is not a perfect system of governance, pseudo Communist imperial governance is also not a perfect system of governance.
2: Most Chinese people - average Chinese people - seem to be pretty free to pursue prosperity and happiness.
3: Just because there is a formal right to free speech does not mean that there IS absolute free speech and just because there is NO formal right to free speech does not mean that peoples speech is automatically curtailed in any Orwellian sense.

It raises an important question of why we feel like we have some sort of moral high ground from which to criticise others.

Perhaps when we have absolute freedom of expression, no political prisoners, and no flaws in our system of government we will be in a position to sit in judgement over China. Until then a certain level of cultural relaivism is appropriate.

I still think two of the most worthwhile things said in the bible are

He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone (sorry I forget the specific chapter and verse reference)

and

Judge not lest ye be judged.

Man... That's a dour note to end the blog on...

I had my European Culture class watch the beginning of Troy today. I took them as far as Achilles landing and stopped the movie as he was in mid-hop over the rail of his boat. Then I said "to be continued next week". Am I cruel of what? :D

[SimonM]

So I got a call friday morning saying that my Gong Fu class was cancelled because Sifu Zhang was visiting his home-town since I had a bad cough and there is a lot of running in his class I was not overly upset and practiced at home. I have a few vcds I picked up. When I have gone through them I will post a review. The first one is by a guy who gets advertised in KFM, Alex Tao.... Anyone seen his stuff before? Anyway, like I said, when I have gone through it I will give reviews.

In other news I introduced my ESL students to the Arrogant Worms by singing "Canada is Really Big" they liked it. But then they like it whenever I sing. It's convenient that I enjoy singing.

[SimonM]

This weekend I climbed a mountain in the dark, picked dates with a pair of Chinese beauties, slept in a cave and did qigong in the first rays of the moring sun on a mountainside.

Let me explain.

I departed from Lishi in the company of two beautiful ladies each only three years younger than myself. Always a good start to a journey. ;) You see a week ago one of those two ladies (Lake, yes her English name is Lake) invited her friend Eileen and I to visit her home-town. One of my main reasons for coming to China was to travel so I immediately assented. We took a crowded bus across many precarious dirt roads perched on the side of the earthen mountains that dominate the western Shanxi landscape for two hours before arriving at a small town nestled on a small plateau surrounded by terraced mountains and hills covered in corn, millet, caster, and date trees. We walked down the side of the small mountain that the village we disembarked from was and up to the base of a much taller mountain (about 800 meters). There we were faced with a choice. Lake's village occupied the top half of the mountain. Her house was on one of the lower terraces, about 350-400 meters above where we were. The light was fading fast and we had already walked 2 kilometers over uneven terrain. So we could take the road (the safe path) or the steep dirt trail up the side of the mountain (the not-so-safe path). Neither Eileen or I had been to this village before so I asked Lake "which is faster" she said "that path" (pointing to the steep dirt trail) and so up that path we went. Everything was fine until we got to a point where the trail its self was sloped roughly 45 degrees. It was nearly dark by then (the nearly full moon was large and bright in a navy blue sky) and Eileen lost her nerve and began to do those mistakes caused by nervousness that can get one hurt when climbing a narrow and steep mountain trail in twilight. So with Lake leading us and pathfinding, I took Eileen's hand (I was behind her) and told her not to be afraid because I wouldn't let her fall. Ok, so I was playing up the white-knight role, so sue me!

We got to the top of the path, flushed and buzzed on adrenaline from a combination of strenuous climbing and nervous energy from our ascent of the narrow trail, and wandered through the many terraces and pathes of the village until we came to Lake's house. It was a traditional Shanxi dwelling: an artaficial cave dug into the side of the mountain with a walled courtyard in-front. To their credit it was really the closest thing I have ever seen to a hobbit hole, underground, one story, dry, clean and tidy. We watched TV and sipped tea before the three of us went out to climb the rest of the way up the mountain to the summit.

Eileen was getting very tired, as she said she was from a city and was not used to so much climbing. So Lake took her hand and I (taking up the rear once more) spotted her promising that I wouldn't let her stumble. We climbed the rest of the way up the mountain to the summit, covered in a large castor crop. So we returned to the second terrace (about 2 meters beneath the summit) where there was a patch of grass underneath some date trees overlooking a hundred foot cliff. We picked some fresh dates (you have not had dates until you have them right off the tree) and sat and talked and sometimes just sat quietly and listened to the sound of wind and water; a welcome change from the car-horns of Lishi.

Around 11 o-clock we returned to the house and went to sleep. I slept soundly until 7:45 this morning when Lake woke me up. The three of us went out front to pick dates from the trees in front of their house to take back with us to Lishi and I paused to practice the Qigong routines I brought with me from Canada. The house overlooked a grove of date trees in a steep ravine and so it was a beautiful sight, inspiring. Then we went to work. Lake and Eileen found my ability to bend the thicker branches downward (a combination of height, strength and weight) to be very useful in collecting some dates which they otherwise could not reach.

We went into the house and had dates, moon cakes (to celebrate the Moon Festival today) and noodles with squash and tomato sauce for breakfeast before returning to the bus stop.

All the hiking and climbing over the last two days had taken a toll on Eileen and she fell asleep on the bus - in my arms. It was a good weekend.

[TonyM.]

What a great time you must have had! Carry on!

[SimonM]

So I said I'd review his VCD after I went through it. I have two VCDs. The first one was not particularly bad but it was incredibly basic. Basic footwork for in sparring; a few throws, punches, locks (mostly wrist) kicks, lots of kicks, headbuts, hip bumps and shoulder strikes.

I guess he was on the cover of KFM once because the video starts with a big blow-up of the cover. Gene: free advertising in China; you should start distributing in Lishi, Shanxi, PRC, 033000. OK? ;)

Anyways, I was not overly fond of the hip bump because if I were in the position he was in I'd simply chuck the target right over my shoulder and onto the ground in-front of me rather than leaving the opponent standing behind me with a slightly sore pelvis. The elbows seemed sound enough, the kicks were relatively good (some better than others), the knee-headbut combo he drills was wonderful; it's too bad it would probably get a person DQed from pretty much any tournament. He didn't really demonstrate how to apply the locks at all so I can't comment on their efficacy however he was using compliant partners in the video for application drills so I don't know how much use they would have been anyway. His shoulder striking techniques were novel; they were amoung the few new things I picked up off the video and I am looking foreward to having an opportunity to stress-test the hell out of them.

I wasn't entirely impressed with the punching. His punches tended to be a bit off-center and he kept his guard quite wide. Since my Sifu advocated control of the center line and a narrow guard I was a bit concerned about this.

All in all I'd say that this would be a relatively good VCD - for beginners but has little for more advanced students aside from some non-conventional strike point drills (head, shoulder, hip) a few fancy ground kicks and low-sweeps.

I don't understand why most schools DON'T include the headbut in their curriculum. Even NBDMA didn't really teach it. It's just that my bro and I muddled it out by trial and error (possibly at the cost of a few braincells but I still got my degree so I'm not overly concerned).

PS: I went to my favorite tea house in Lishi (Hong Ch'a) with Elaine and Lake (and one tag-along guy who invited himself :p) this evening and we had a great time. I think that I am beginning to quite like Elaine... She asked me if she could come with me to the disco next weekend. I said yes... I don't know how to dance though. :eek:

[SimonM]

So anyone who can go home for the Moon Festival to spend time with their families does. Sadly that includes Sifu Zhang and so once more class was cancelled. Oh well, more at-home practice for Simon. I worked the bag for a while, my knuckles have finally fully healed from when I split them open and this time they are thickening up enough again that I didn't cut them again. However I'm afraid that my poor punching bag has seen better days. Much more punishment like this and it may be the one with a cut. Hopefully duct tape is available in China; if not at least it was cheap.

After that I decided to play around a little bit. I've been working on codifying some ideas I have for paired knives, long and short. The two blades I'm using are a 14 inch short sabre and a 10-11 inch bowie knife but, hey, it's what I've got. As I'm a lefty the long one sits in the left hand while the short is residing in my right. I played around with those for a while and managed to not cut myself while still getting the first few movements how I wanted them. What can I say I may be an advocate of stress-testing, sparring and partner drills but in the absence of any partners and practice weapons except for sharp steel blades I'll default back to forms until such time as I can test my theories in a safe environment...

I get my photos from my trip back later today. I'll post some of them to either this thread or here. (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=631528#post631528)

[SimonM]

Hey gang! Here are the photos I promised.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/img0018.jpg

This is a picture of me, Lake and Eileen. Eileen is in black and Lake is in Orange. Lake swears that she was not sticking out her tongue in the picture and that it is an error on the negative. :)

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/img0022.jpg

Next in line we have a photo of Lake and Eileen standing in front of the top half of the mountain Lake's house was in. If you squint your eyes up really hard you can just make out the pair of date trees at the top that we sat under on Saturday night.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/img0019.jpg

This is the terrace in front of Lake's house. Here is where I practiced in the morning. Man! This is a lovely village. If not for it being one of the most remote places I have ever visited I'd want to live somewhere like here. It's clean, quiet, and beautiful.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/img0012.jpg

I took this photograph from the spot I practiced at in the morning. How is that for an inspiring view eh?

[GeneChing]

Alex Tao was the cover story (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=133) for out Jan/Feb 2001 issue, one of our best sellers, I might add. We carry a few of his videos (http://www.martialartsmart.net/Military_Police_Videos.html). He has a lot of VCDs in China, along with a highly-regarded TV series that was televised about half a decade ago. In fact, these videos were extracted from the master tapes of some of his China VCDs; we re-edited, re-formated and translated them and have exclusive rights for US distribution. GM Tao was in our area for a few months over the summer and he filmed two more videos for us: 24 Killing Blows of the Chinese Military and Fingertip Handstands - both of which should debut any day now... :D

[SimonM]

My internet was down. I'm posting just quickly before class today. If I am not too tired I will post again later. I haven't had a chance to look at the second VCD in the Alex Tao series. I don't want to judge too finally on GM Tao based on the first as it was a very basic VCD however in combination with a related style of training in a classroom setting it could be a useful aid for a beginner in home-study.

Now I just need a living room large enough to move around in without kicking the coffee table all the time. ;) I converted my office into a gym room but there is no TV in there.

[SimonM]

Went well. I didn't collapse during the running like during the first class... Running is my bane. I also found that the style of gongfu here is very different in some key ways to the style back home... Less mobile, more fixed stances I didn't really like that too much but I figure that learning completely different styles and then critically analyzing them can only help me as long as I don't allow any bad habits to enter into my ring-work. Still no ring-work yet; I do hope we get some soon as it is sparring that I like most. :o

[SimonM]

So I get a call from one of my better friends asking me if I want to go to a party being held at the public square outside of the museum. Since my other option for entertainment tonight was to watch Seven Swords (again) in the Resource Room I say YES!

But one small catch: she wants to walk and I have trouble saying no to a sweet girl with beautiful eyes. So despite the fact that my legs are aching from class earlier today we walk to the public square... About 4 to 5 kilometers away from the school and on the opposite side of a hill.

She, her best friend, her best friends boyfriend and I set off from the school around 7:50 and arrive at the public square by 8:25. By that time the performers are already on the stage, the crowds are thick, vendors are selling dates, sunflower seeds, iced tea, Wen Tou, and just about anything that you can cook on a stick.

My friend and I lose the other two couples (we met another of their friends and her boyfriend on the way) in the crowd as she wants to get closer to get a better view. It works counter-productive to her goal though as we get boxed in by the crowd and although I can look over the heads of the crowd with ease she can not, she is a head shorter than I am. (She is the one in black in the photographs in a previous entry of my Blog.)

Anyway, long story short, there are only four performers after we arrive: a very entertaining Shanxi traditional folk singer, a really, really lousy pop singer, another folk singer (who was not quite as good as the first but who was much better than the dismal pop singer) and then a song and dance performance put on by the arts department of my school that featured four excellent singers and quite a lot of interesting traditional Shanxi dancing. Then the party was over. We had been there for mabey 20 minutes. And my friend wanted to walk back again. :eek: To my credit I did get to within 2 km of their home before I said that I really wanted to cab it the rest of the way (I cited an early morning and the fact that the gates closed in less than 20 minutes as excuses) and we hopped a cab back to their school before I returned home to write this entry. So that's the latest of my China adventures.

PS: New on my MP3 Player: Raining Blood by Slayer as covered by Tori Amos

[SimonM]

I swear. There are a few students who have taken to showing up in classes that they are not registered for, sometimes doing the same lesson two or three times in one week, when they don't have other classes.

There is one girl who seems to show up to literally every class I teach except for when she is in another class. She did my boring as all hell writing class three times this week! She has also showed up to every movie night and every English corner. Today I remarked on the fact that she had attended so many extra classes and she said "I just like your classes"!

Oh! And some of my students have taken to watching the Gong Fu class that I am in.

PS: Want a laugh? Go to this website. (http://www.rpglibrary.org/inspiration/darkdungeons/intro.html)

[SimonM]

One of my students took me out for dinner with a friend of hers who wants to visit my ESL class. He is the first person in China to drink me under the table. I'm a little intoxicated right now so I'll sign off 'till tomorow. TTYAL!

[SimonM]

So I get home from work today to the sound of my phone ringing.

I get to the phone and it is one of the ladies I have been spending time with lately.

"I called you three times, why didn't you answer?" she says.

I appologize and say that I hadn't gotten home yet. Later in the night she brought up the subject again and I told her that I was teaching a class.

Anyways... She asks me if I am free. Unfortunately I am not. Changfeng (my not-really-FAO who does the FAO job) is coming over to take me to the bank. Despite the fact that Changfeng and I tend to squabble whenever we are in each other's company for more than five minutes I need his help to deal with the PTBs at the bank of China so his presence was sort of necessary.

Sadly his presence is basically anathema to this friend of mine; she hates him.

I appologize to her and promise to message her the second I am done with Changfeng.

So I go to the bank and buy the Canadian money I need to transfer. Then I go to transfer the money just to find out that though the bank remains open until 6 you can't do money transfers after 4. I got off class at 4:30. Ma Fan.

So I leave the bank, briefly stop by the bus station where I find out that I can't take a bus directly from Lishi to Deng Feng, I will have to go to another city (such as Taiyuan) first and take either busses or trains from there and then head home. The entire way back Changfeng and I argue about how I should get to Shaolin. He thinks I should take a bus to Luoyang and then take the train from there while I think I should take a bus to Taiyuan and take the train from there. According to my sources the trains are generally cheaper than the busses see. Anyway after Changfeng suggests that I walk to Deng Feng I counter with the suggestion that he give me one of his two motorcycles and a roadmap and I will just drive myself down. That kind of ends that quarrel just around the time I arrive home.

As I'm getting through the door my cellphone goes off and I get an instant message from my friend asking me if I am out still. I write her back that I just stepped through the door.

"Do you want to go to dinner with me?" she asks.

"Yes. Where and when?"

"BDC at 7:00."

"OK!"

At this time I check the clock and see it's actually 6:15. I haven't showered, I haven't shaved, I'm wearing yesterday's T-Shirt and I'm damp from the rain.

Ok, no problem, shave quickly, jump into the shower, heap on the shampoo (expensive western shampoo that smells nice) grab my only clean and dry shirt (the uniform top from my Canadian Kwoon - a cotton t-shirt with the logo of the school: Northern above, Black Dragon below and in the middle the characters 黑
龍武術) throw on a jacket and rush out the door.

So I get to BDC with two minutes to spare despite the bad traffic. She hasn't arrived yet. Bonus. Two minutes later she arrives and this time she is without her best friend who has often accompanied us when we go out together she is however wearing the bracelet that I got her a while back and over the course of the night she had a tendency to fidgit with it a lot. We go into the restaurant and order and a very common scene between us plays out.

I reach into my wallet. She says "Bu shi" and reaches for her purse. I reply with "no, ,no, no, I've got this one" and hand over a 50 rather than spending time rooting for exact change. We go upstairs and have supper together just talking (mostly about weddings we have been to and flowers) for about two hours... A long time to spend sitting in a KFC knockoff on a rainy night.

Supper ends and we go for a walk. We end up in the park. With the rain and the increasingly late hour the park is abandoned. Most of the lights in the park are off and the only sound is that of raindrops hitting the ornamental lake and the distant street noises of Urban China. We walk along the lake sometimes talking and sometimes just being quiet until we reach a foot-bridge. We pause there and talk about subjects that become increasingly personal and emotionally charged on both sides. Then we walk off the bridge making small talk and telling jokes and the rest of the way around the lake before hailing a cab and going home.

[Mel]

It definitely sounded like a date to me. It also sounds like she's very insecure about where she stands with you and how you feel about her. She is trying to feel you out. Then when she discovers she is making it obvious, she backs off.

You haven't been there very long Simon, you old hound dog. :D

[SimonM]

:D What can I say? I've got the luck of the Irish. ;)

I did get a bit of the vibe you mention from her. I just hope that I can help to ease those insecurities somewhat. I quite like this lass, she is true gold. :)

[SimonM]

So in celebration of the holiday I'm having a few students over for a party at my flat. I decided to do a traditional Irish meal so I went out and bought potatoes, carrots, onions, celery and mutton so that I could make Mutton Stew. I also bought beer, new spoons and bowls with which to eat the stew.

Only a small problem there are sticky price tags on the spoons that don't want to come off. But I think: hot water dissolves sticky price tags so I toss the spoons into a basin and put my kettle on to heat some water. Then I go and sit down on the couch while I wait for the water to boil. Then I unintentionally doze off. An hour later I awake to a bit of a bad smell. I go to the kitchen and lo and behold: I've burned a hole straight through my kettle! So my kettle is ruined and I don't know if the element on the stove will cool down in time for me to clean it in order to be able to use both burners to make stew. And I still need to soak my spoons! Anyways I opened a bunch of windows and I think that I will go for a walk for a few minutes while my flat airs out... Freaking melting kettles!

[SimonM]

Ok here is the first installment of my Shaolin Adventure. The story starts yesterday morning at 4:30 when I hopped over the fence to my school to catch the early bus from Lishi to Taiyuan. I dozed fitfully on the bus and arrived in Taiyuan around 8:30. I got in touch with my friend in Taiyuan and met her near her flat. We went to the train station and found out that there were no trains leaving for Zhengzhou with available seats and the only train going to Luoyang was not leaving until 7:33. Ok, gotta kill a day in Taiyuan I guess. So we went back to my friends place and chilled there for a bit before heading out for lunch. She wants McDonalds. I swear the Big Mac is the same everywhere on earth. Light grey meat, styrofoam flavour, soggy bun, it was like a wretched taste of home!

After lunch my friend took me back to her place again and let me crash there while she ran some errands; I was tired. So I slept through most of the afternoon. After she arrived back I gave her a demonstration of my Gong Fu skills :p (she asked) and then we went back to the train station. We got supper at the station and then I boarded my train.

I had a hard-seat and no sleeping birth on the train from Taiyuan to Luoyang. The trip, which started at 7:33, did not arrive in Luoyang until 9:00 - the next morning. I got little sleep. Also my MP3 player was on the fritz. I think I got a bad pack of batteries. Last time I buy that brand! I hopped off at Luoyang and immediately boarded a bus to Shaolin. I talked with a French couple and with a Chinese man who had exeptional english for the two hour bus ride through some gorgeous countryside (especially after the starkness of Shanxi) and arrived behind Shaolin. We drove all the way through the temple and ended up at the front gate. I, however, did not go in; I caught a bus to Dengfeng and got a hotel room. I needed a shower desperately. Washed I returned out and set about finding my friends. I have not had any luck and when I run out of time at this internet cafe I am going to go to the temple without them if they haven't checked in. I did meet a spanish Gong Fu student who is doing a two month stint here. I referred her to the website. If you read this, Ni Hao and welcome to the madhouse!

[SimonM]

I did pick up a souvenir at the gate:

A Shaolin Big Bead Necklace for 8 RMB. {Gene I tried to link this to the martialartsmart.com ad but it wouldn't come up!}

I probably got hosed but it's still much cheaper than getting the same gear in Canada.

[SimonM]

So I arrived late to Shaolin temple. I had been waiting for a few other ESL teachers to join me and sadly they were not able to. Anyway it had just begun to rain and the temple closed in an hour when I arrived at the gate so I was about the only person walking INTO the temple complex. I shot nearly my whole roll of film before I even got to the temple propper. I didn't expect it to be such a long walk; not even Gene's articles prepared me for the massive scale of the Songshan/Shaolin complex. I know that many people say "oh it's just a big tourist trap" or "the shaolin monks are not real" and to them I say that they are just as wrong in their opinions as those who said that voice of fire was a waste of money. The chances are good they have never been there and will never go there so they just don't understand. I don't care if the buildings are new; this is the birth place of ch'an buddhism. Buddhism tells us that nothing is permanent, nothing is eternal. Buildings come and go. The dharma remains. I found myself moved beyond words beyond my ability to experess them as I walked in the lanse of Shaolin. Then I finally arrived in the temple and I walked up the steps of the complex past the giant trees and the beautiful carvings to the uppermost terrace and knelt before an image of the Buddha. I am generally not a religious guy - if I have a religion it's a blend of Buddhism and Paganism though my decidedly Athiest streak tends to marginalize the pagan half. This was one of the most spiritually, religiously powerful moments of my life. I stayed at the altar for... a second, a minute, ten, I'm not sure and then the monks there indicated that they wanted to close the doors and get to their lodgings before the rising rain became any worse. So I left, talking to the monks. They eventually went a different direction than me. Then I reached the front gate and found it locked!

I and three ladies were stuck inside the temple. After trying several doors we eventually found a monk who lodged INSIDE the temple. He invited us in out of the rain, mildly scolded us for missing the closing time and then did a bit of... impromptu chiropracty on the four of us. Then he gave me a gift of some calligraphy in exchange for a small donation that I offered to the temple. Then he escorted us to a side door and let us out into the night. The taxi driver wanted to talk on the way back to Deng Feng. I didn't. I just wanted to sit there and not-think. I don't know how to say it exactly but.....

I don't know. :)

[SimonM]

Alright I am better rested now so it's time to put my thoughts regarding the rest of my trip into some sort of logica (and legible) order.

After my excursion to Shaolin I decided that (having done everything I wanted to do) I would set off for home. So the next morning I checked out of the hotel, gathered up all my souvenirs and hopped a cab for the bus station. At the bus station I found a bus to Luoyang and got on. I asked the price and at first was told 20 RMB but somehow it changed to 15. I decided not to mention the discrepancy. However the next time I go to Deng Feng I think that a "bus to Luoyang" will be how I get to Shaolin temple; it's cheaper than taking a cab.

Before we left I bought a second set of Shaolin Big-Beads. I bargained the price down from the 20 RMB the lady wanted to the 8 RMB I paid for the first string. My Chinese friends tell me I got a really good deal. I guess I'm getting the hang of this bargaining thing. That string is a gift for Eileen who said she is bringing some tea from Hangzhou (my favorite tea producing region) back for me when she returns from seeing her family in Datong.

Anyways... At Luoyang I get a ticket back to Taiyuan, no designated seat so I will have to hurry to find an empty seat if I don't want to stand all the way back... This is on another overnight run. I get my seat and then go to upgrade my ticket to a bed. I get a hard sleeper no problem (with an assist from Eileen who im'ed me what to say to the ticket guy) and sleep most of the way back to Taiyuan.

I send a message to one of my students (who is in Taiyuan for the holliday, visiting her family) and she meets me at the train station in Taiyuan. We meet her old highschool English teacher and along with her (the teacher) daughter and some other former students we go for lunch at KFC. BDC has better chicken even if it is a knock-off. ;)

From there we head off to WalMart so that I can buy a few commodities not available in Lishi: mens deoderant (the first time I asked for that the response I got was "there's mens deoderant?"), butter and cheese.

Then it's pose for photographs and hop a bus back to Lishi. The bus breaks down about half way home. We wait on (or beside) the bus for about half an hour before the driver decides that he needs a mechanic and calls for a few other busses to take us the rest of the way. During that time I meet a girl who speaks no English but is determined to talk to me anyway. Through the use of an interpreter (who is himself not too skilled at English) she communicates that she thinks I am handsome. No matter how many times I hear that it is still novel; it's something that just didn't happen regularly in Canada.

Anyways two busses come to pick us up. The only English speaker gets on the other bus but the girl gets on mine and sits next to me. I was just glad because this bus had windows I could open and this provided a respite from the tobacco smoke I had been breathing for the last four hours.

We talk most of the way back to Lishi... Most of our conversation is marked by one person speaking and the other saying "Ting Bu Dong" but by the time we get back we have managed to exchange names and phone numbers. I, bemusedly, chalk it up as an interesting experience but don't expect to hear back from Wen Xiao Qing any time soon. She, however, doesn't let a little thing like an almost complete language barrier stop her... She called me this morning!

It's still kind of strange going from Canada (where I had little luck with women) to China (where I basically have to beat the ladies back with a stick) but I'm not complaining. :)

[SimonM]

So today I went back to work. Two writing classes talking about writing announcements. My best class followed immediately by my worst class. The first class used so much wit in their assignments that I collapsed into a fit of laughter after one particularly ingenious assignment. Then the next class had to have each word the wrote or spoke extracted with a crow bar. Ayah!

I got my bicycle finally. It's sweet. It's a Y-frame full suspension bike with an aluminum frame. It's too small so I am going to go shopping for a new seat with a really long post so that I don't damage my knees whenever I try to sit down to pedal. Still it's a full-suspension bike and it was free! Deal!

I also began the first phase of my halloween decorations. What can I say? Halloween is my favorite holliday! The americans who were the previous tennants of my appartment left a plastic toy shaped like a Jack-o-lantern. Whenever it is jostled it lights up and laughs. I hung it from my outer door and am now using it as a doorbell. What's better it's a door bell with an off switch. So my Pu Tong teacher comes by as I am hanging it and we chill for a while drinking tea and chatting in the pidgin which I speak when I am not working these days. I am expecting Lake and Eileen to come by at this point but they are a bit late. Suddenly we hear the laughing noise from my new doorbell. But no knock! So I decide I had best check in case it is my friends and sure enough the two of them are huddled against the opposite wall of the landing in front of my flat. I absolutely love country folk, they are so refreshing. Seriously, I am not being condescending in the slightest, these two ladies are two of my very best friends and I think they are absolutely great!

They come in and the two of them have a five minute argument about which one of them decided to prod the pumpkin out of curiosity. On the balance of probabilities I think it was Eileen who did it. ;)

The two of them also each brought something for me; Lake brought me some very sour berries related to dates that I am quite fond of. She picked them on her family farm up in the mountains. Apparently the plant they come from is covered with thorns. Eileen provided an even more princely gift... a box of Lung Ching Tea from a brand new tea plantation outside of Hangzhou. When I opened the box the smell alone was ambrosia.

I had a gift for Eileen but felt like a jerk because I didn't have one for Lake (A: I'm not trying to court Lake, B: I didn't know Lake was going to bring me a gift while I knew that Eileen was going to) so I waited until a moment when the two of them were not together and told Eileen that I would give her her gift some other time as to protect Lake's feelings.

I think I have figured out one of the reasons why the obecity rate is so much lower in China despite their oily, starchy diet: their main source of sweets is fresh fruit. Berries, apples, dates, pears, it's not chocolate bars and potato chips these folks are eating. I'm hoping that this is a habit I can get into. The fact that my fridge is stuffed full of various fruits right now gives me some hope that I will succeed.

Anyway...

I sent a few messages to my new Sifu. First I confirmed that there would be a class tomorow (there usually isn't a Sunday class) as for some reason we are having Friday classes this Sunday. As we were in school last Friday this makes little sense to me but since I just got a week off and since it means an extra Gong Fu lesson I'm not complaining.

The second message was me asking about getting hooked up with some San Da partners. Sparring was a regular part of my training in Canada and was one of my favorite parts. Since I got to China I have been doing forms, running and hitting the heavy bag but I haven't had the chance to spar once. This is frustrating. Unfortunately my Sifu's response was ambiguous: "yes, I am a fan too". I hope he understood what I meant. :)

[SimonM]

Most of today's class was San Da, Taiji and Basketball. Only about 20 minutes of Wushu forms.

[SimonM]

For you Americans in the audience please remember that Canadian Thanksgiving is October 10.

Today was the second day in a row I had a Gong Fu class at the school thanks to the non-standard Sunday class yesterday. I was very happy. Today's class was manly Taiji. For anyone who has never done two hours of Taiji in a row it is actually remarkably tiring. Yeah, it's not fast but it is:

A: Very hard on the legs.

B: Hard work in general to keep your movements fluid through two hours of constant practice.

My Chinese Sifu impressed me since he did occasionally stop the form to demonstrate applications and then split us into pairs to try it out. Now, mind, since I and my partner were stress testing the technique (I always do and I think he didn't want to look like a pushover to the fat laowai) I took a few liberties occasionally and strayed into other regions of my shuai jiao background... As my buddy Chris would say: "Meh, it's all good."

Anyhow after class I showed off my photographs from my Shaolin trip... I'll try to post them tomorow. Tonight I am finishing my EMail, sipping some scotch and then watching Kung Fu Hustle until I get drowsy. For some reason every single picture I am in didn't work though! :eek:

Sometimes this got rediculous. For instance, my friend Li Lin and I were in her flat. I had just loaded my camera and wanted to fire off a few shots to make sure that the film in the chamber was nice and fresh (no accidental exposure) when I got to Deng Feng. So I took her picture. Then we traded places, I stood in exactly the same spot she had and she took my picture. The photo of her turned out (and led to me having to answer a dozen times "no, she is not my girlfriend" to enquiring Gong Fu brothers). I guess my camera must be difficult to operate or something if you are not me. :(

So I returned home from class and sent a message to Eileen letting her know that I had to shower and then go to the photo store to pick up my CD. I asked her if she would like to come along. She said "yes, after I have supper". Now I had asked her out for supper a few nights before and she had declined because she had a 3000 word paper she had to finish. But a few days had past since then and I wanted to try again to have her out so I reply to her that she should come right away and I would gladly buy supper for her. Then I say "it's thanksgiving and it's my first one away from home, I'd really appreciate the company". A bit sneaky? Yes. I blame Homer. I just finished reading the Odyssey and I have always had a soft spot for Odyssius... That man was really sneaky.

She says yes she will gladly come over for supper then. Ten minutes later (around 6:00) she shows up. However the last FT here was British and the one before that was American so she expects Thanksgiving to be some time in November or December. Now I'll point out that even though she didn't believe me at first she still agreed to have supper with me so I think that she really didn't need too much convincing however she did call me on the date of Thanksgiving.

Fortunately my parents gave me a callendar as a present when I left for Lishi. It has "Thanksgiving Day (Canada)" marked quite clearly on it on today. I show her this and she was completely content.

We went to the photo store and I got my CD and then we went through my proofs and picked one print to enlarge to an 8x12. Then we left and tried to decide where to eat.

I said I'd eat anywhere except for a fast food restaurant. I didn't want fried chicken for Thanksgiving Dinner.

She said she didn't particularly care where we ate as long as it was quiet; a private room for preference as English is not her first language and she finds it easier to converse in it when there isn't a hundred people speaking Pu Tong Hua around. Then she asks me:

"What do you traditionally eat on Thanksgiving?"

I say "A large bird called a Turkey; I don't think you have them in China."

She replies "I thought that was the American Thanksgiving."

"Yes, it's the same in Canada. I think the closest thing you have to Turkey here would probably be Duck, do you like Duck?"

"Not really."

"Ok, we won't have Duck then. What do you want to eat?"

"It's your festival, you decide."

"I'll eat anything that doesn't still have eyes on it when it reaches the table. I just want to make sure you are happy, you decide."

Well eventually we agreed to try one of two Schezuan restaurants on the other side of town. Sadly neither had a private room and both were quite busy. So I say "I know a restaurant where we could get a private room for sure; I'm friends with the owner. One catch, it's western food. Do you like western food?"

"I don't know, I've never tried it."

"Do you want to?"

"Ok."

So we headed to the aptly named "west food" and got a lovely private room on the third floor. We were the only patrons on the floor as "west food" is always quite quiet. Honestly I still don't understand how Xiao Hong keeps it in business. Eileen decided she wanted to try pizza and ordered the seafood pizza. I had spaghetti and we both had a beer. Red wine was 65 RMB a glass so we decided to go with beer instead. In a humourous turn-around my Spaghetti came with chopsticks (which I can use) while her pizza came with a knife and fork... which Eileen had never used before. I explained to her that people would normally eat it with their hands but she was aghast at that idea so she decided she would figure out the knife and fork and five minutes later was asking me how we possibly ever finished a meal using such tools. So Eileen asked me to help her and for the first several pieces I cut them for her and held the fork for her while she ate the pizza off of it.

Now you must understand that I was not trying to get Eileen drunk. I ordered a grand total of two beers, one for me and one for her. They were Budweiser - less than 5% alcohol and they were not the double-size bottles common to China. They were ordinary single serving bottles. They came with half serving glasses. About half way through the meal Eileen finished the first glass and began saying that she was feeling flushed. By the time she finished her second glass (at the end of the meal) she was saying she felt a little drunk. OOPS! :p

So I ordered us some coffee and we sat and talked until about 10:15. The gates to LLHC close at 11:00 and we had to stop momentarily at my flat so that I could give her the beads I got for her at Shaolin Temple. She loved them and said that she planned to show them to her grandmother who is a devout Buddhist.

I walked Eileen back to the east campus of Luliang Higher College (where her flat is) and returned back to the west campus shortly before the gates closed. Good thing too as the gate is about 6 and a half feet high and my legs are tired from Taiji class plus doing a lot of running, wushu, san da and basketball in the last two days. I've had to climb the gate once and it is quite do-able but I don't think I would have wanted to tonight.

So although I do miss my family and although I am thinking of them all... Grandma, Granddad, Dad, Mom, Cal, Sheilagh and our mut Chloe I had a wonderful thanksgiving. And Eileen told me she also had a wonderful night.

PS: When I told Eileen that pizza was covered in Cheese she was a bit apprehensive. Chinese people do drink milk and eat yoghurt these days but cheese is still not a large part of the regular diet. However once she tried the pizza she loved it. She confessed that in Datong (where she is from) there are several pizzerias and she and her friends had often considered going to one except that they didn't know how to eat pizza. She did complain that the little pizza (smaller than a pizza pizza small) was "too much food" though. She was loth to leave any behind because it was bad manners and did recruit me to ead a couple pieces. By the time that there was only one piece left we were both stuffed full and so I convinced her that it wouldn't be rude to leave one slice behind. I did suggest boxing it as an alternative but she thought cold pizza would be awful. I would have disagreed (I like cold pizza) if it weren't a seafood pizza. ;)

[SimonM]

Hey guys! I have photos from my Shaolin Trip up online now!

I'll start with Deng Feng. This is taken on one of the main roads in Deng Feng. It's clean for a Chinese city... Remarkably clean. It rained the whole time I was at Shaolin. It's good I like rain.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/DengFengMainStreet.jpg

This photograph was taken at a park in Deng Feng.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/DengFengParkScuplture.jpg

This is from the complex of buildings out front of the gate. Technically it's just visitors centers, restaurants and souvenir shops - not the temple proper but they are lovely buildings and it is a great view of Song Shan. I made an enlargement of this photograph for my wall... 8x12 for 15 RMB. I love China!

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/InfrontoftheShaolinGate.jpg

There were all kinds of little yellow signs along the walkway through the grounds towards the temple its self. This was my favorite of them. I have been using it in class because of the fractured grammar on the English. Still I love the sentiment.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/CuteSign.jpg

There is this wonderful little bamboo grove inside the temple. This is a photo of it. Eileen has the original proof of the shot but I kept the negative. I may make an enlargement of it too in a few weeks. I haven't decided yet.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/Bamboo.jpg

There are many more pictures from my trip that I am going to share but they will have to wait until tomorow. I have walked across Lishi twice today. I bussed to the photo store to pick up my enlargement and decided to walk home. I got back and sat down to upload my pics when I noticed my cell phone (which I forgot at home) was flashing a missed-call. Eileen. So I called her immediately and she asked me if I wanted to go out for supper... at a restaurant a block away from the photo store. She was already there! I took a taxi down to the restaurant immediately and after supper we walked back to my place to watch some TV. Anyway the end result is that I crossed the entire freaking city twice today and I didn't get much sleep last night. I need bed now. Good night everyone.

[SimonM]

Sorry I was going to post these last night but I had a power outage.

More pictures from my Shaolin trip... First: a photograph of Song Shan. The sky wasn't really quite that green though it was close. However I'd definately say that Green is the dominant colour of the Shaolin Temple complex.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/SongShan.jpg

Next the main gate to the temple complex. This thing is really big.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/ShaolinGate.jpg

Near the temple forge training facility is a large building that I think is some kind of museum or performance hall. I'm not sure which, I didn't go inside because I wanted to push on to the temple its self. Next time I go to Shaolin I want to arrive in the morning so that I have all day to explore. I'd love to see inside the forge.

This photograph was taken in front of the building. It took quite a lot of work to set up a shot with enough light in it that contained both the statue of the wrestlers and the drum with the Wu character. What do you think?

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/Wu.jpg

Finally (for today, I have three more photographs taken in Deng Feng and the Shaolin Complex that I haven't uploaded to Photobucket yet) here is a picture taken inside the temple its self. This photograph was shot at 1/30th of a second in the last few dying rays of light that day. The next shot I took was less than a minute later and in it the sky looks black!

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/ShaolinTemple.jpg

[SimonM]

This should (hopefully) be the last installment of photographs from my Shaolin trip. I'm uploading the last shot into photobucket right now and the internet seems to be cooperating.

Fingers crossed....

Anyways. The first picture I have is a detail from a stone dragon. I can't quite recall if this was in Deng Feng or in the Shaolin complex as such things can be found in both places. Regardless I liked this sculpture and got in nice and close for the detail work. One of the things I really love about China, there are many, is how much public sculpture there is.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/Dragon.jpg

This Canal runs through Deng Feng and up towards the Shaolin end of town. It passes right in front what one person refered to as "the old entrance"... A shaolin sight much closer to the city than the main temple complex that I did not have a chance to peruse while in Deng Feng... Next time.

Anyways I just loved this little Canal so I snapped a quick shot.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/ShaolinCanal.jpg


ok, so I was wrong. I have one last photo left that I can't get to upload and I am already up later than I wanted. Ill try again tomorow after Gong Fu class.

[SimonM]

Also Thank You Master Chau for my Name!

Today we continued the Taiji unit in Gong Fu class (after a longer than average run). :eek: I honestly think that the runs are getting a bit easier though. Anyways...

As was the case last time we continued with Yang style Taiji. And just like last time we occasionally stopped to discuss applications. My taiji form is not the most beautiful there; I won't be winning any awards for it in a forms demonstration but I think I have a bit of a leg up on my classmates on the chin'na and shuai jiao applications of the form. Why? Because I spent three years learning traditional Gong Fu with a sifu who was top-rate in Chin-na and Shuai Jiao. Despite the fact that in my class I was merely average in skill at grappling (though I was a good kick-boxer due to my power) here that previous training is helping me to decode the applicable material in Taiji rather well. It is there and it's not bloody Qi magic. It's just that it looks rather stylized in the form; once I see Sifu Zhang do it against a person though it becomes pretty easy to repeat.

Because of the subject of the class today a few of us decided to play some Shuai Jiao during our break. I got a grand total of one match. It lasted fifteen seconds. :( It took me that long to break past his guard, get control of his head, step behind his legs and transition to him on the ground with me on-top in Cross Body position. What was worse the class has not learned breakfalls and this was on a hard earth surface. The guy hurt his elbow a bit. (Oops!) After that nobody else wanted to play Shuai Jiao with me. I thought it prudent to dust my partner off, clap him on the back and check out his elbow (which was a bit scraped) in order to show that I had not intentionally hurt him. It's just that breakfalls were literally the very first thing Master Chau EVER taught me. And I hadn't expected my partner (who is studying Gong Fu in University) to fall over quite so easily.

Between that and the Chinese Name that Master Chau gave me I have developed a reputation as a tough character which is fortunately balanced by my perpetual smile and tendency to tell jokes so that people don't think I am a jerk.

Perhaps I should explain; Master Chau gave me the Chinese name Xi Men (西门) The first two characters have the same sound as the first two characters in the name of a famous villain from one of the classics of Chinese literature. He never told me that but I do appreciate the joke and proudly use my Chinese name here in China to great effect. Thank you Master Chau!:D :D :D

[SimonM]

Sorry, I was going to edit this into my last post but it wouldn't let me edit for some reason!

This is a photograph of students entering Dharma Hall. It was when I saw this (more than even seeing the statue or the big gate) that made me really feel like I had entered into the world of Shaolin. I don't know why. It just moved me. ;)

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b131/SimonM223/DharmaHall.jpg

[SimonM]

Ok, first things first, I want to advertise another interesting Blog about life in China. Nothing to do with Gong Fu but still a good read: http://chinalife.typepad.com/

Now today I found out some good news. There is a "sports meeting" this Friday and all classes are cancelled Friday and Saturday. What's more, there is no makeup class on Sunday. The bad news is that means that my Friday Gong Fu class will be cancelled. The good news is that I can take my shopping trip into Taiyuan earlier. I'll probably still leave on Saturday because I don't want to spend the money on a hotel for two nights but I can leave early Saturday morning and have all day Saturday and as much of Sunday as I like (have to be back in Lishi by 9:00 for an online appointment) rather than having to wait until after noon to catch a bus for the four hour mountain road trek to Taiyuan.

Time to load the MP三 with some new songs I guess. I have enough; about 300 on my computer and several hundred more on CDRs.

Anyways the thing is that yet again I found out through my extensive informal network of friends and NOT from the school. If Tomoko (who hasn't made the same network yet) hadn't heard from me she still wouldn't know... Tomoko is the Japanese teacher at LLHC, an absolutely wonderful woman and yet another example of a friend I have made because I made the choice to step out of my life in Canada into the great unknown. The world is full of amazing people and places if you just look for them.

Sorry I am going off on one of my "travel is good for the soul" tangents again.

Back to the Gong Fu. I was a little ill on Monday; nothing that time and pepto-bismol didn't cure but ill in a manner that precluded spending a few hours in a field hundreds of meters from the nearest toilet so I had to miss class. This would have made this week a complete writeoff if I hadn't arranged for some make-up tuition time tomorow after I finish MY classes. Tomorow will be a long day between my three classes and this but it is very important to me that I continue with my training. I am really enjoying the new material.

Today I managed to rope an actual Shuai Jiao player into a friendly match. It ended basically the same (looks like my wrestling skills are better than I give myself credit for, thank you Master Chau who taught me most of what I know about the art, thank you Cal - my #1 Shuai Jiao partner) but took a bit longer... about a minute. And HE didn't hurt himself when he landed; looks like he DID know breakfalls. He did tap, however, the second I transitioned into the mount position (landed in cross body again and transitioned immediately). I guess his school wasn't too heavy on ground work. :p Afterwards he admitted he had never played with somebody as tall and heavy as me. I pointed out that if my head was too high up for him to reach (which it really wasn't) he could have always shot for my legs and offered a rematch any time. Then we knocked back a few cokes and chilled for a bit. Between that and the heap of EMail I have gotten from my Gong Fu brothers and sisters in Canada I've had a good week.

P.S.

Nancy I have some new words...

太贵了 tai gui le
能便宜点吗? Neng pian yi diar ma?
可以吗? Ke yi ma?
可以 Ke yi.
不可以 Bu ke yi.
我很喜欢 Wo hen xi huan.
多小tien你想要? Duo xiao tien ni xiang yao? I think my pinyin might be a bit flawed here because I can't get the right character for tien to appear. Oh well, I know how to say it and how to draw it.

Ok bonus kudos who can guess why I am learning these particular phrases.

[SimonM]

A few days back Eileen invited me to have supper with her and her mother. Her mother was coming to visit her. I was quite willing to do so. So today she comes by, we watch TV a bit (I said watch TV or go for a walk and Eileen chose TV :D) and then she goes to the bus station to meet her mother.

Sadly our plans fizzled. Her mother became quite car-sick on the long journey from Datong to here and the thought of a big meal out at a fancy restaurant was not something she felt up to. Eileen (understandably) didn't want to leave her ill mother who she almost never sees to go out with a guy she can see nearly every day so she cancelled out of tonight too. Oh well.

Anyway other things I said I would talk about today.

Well 1: I am going to Taiyuan tomorow morning. I don't know if the internet cafes in Taiyuan are up and running. So I may be offline for a few days. The cafes are temporarily closed in Luliang. The rumour is that a couple of boys got into a fight over an online video game and killed each other. I don't know if this is true or not but regardless the internet cafes have been temporarily shut - much to my student's chagrin.

2: At English corner last night we started talking about Gong Fu. I love talking about Gong Fu and as often happens when such topics arise my students wanted a demo. NO PROBLEM. So this time, rather than showing off some simple form I decided to show a couple of shuai Jiao, chin'na and 12 Bridges applications. Well my students just ate it up. They loved it. And after the english corner was over a few of them said that I should teach Gong Fu. Now in my own personal opinion I am not skilled enough yet to teach. Sorry but I believe in adhering to a high standard in tuition of martial arts. I can handle myself in a scuffle but that does not a master make. And skill level aside I don't want to be yet another "fat shifu" getting ridiculed for my girth on Martial Arts websites so I would like to drop the gut before I start teaching. ;) :D So anyway I declined and said that they could check back in 10 years. My students did seem to accept that answer though I hope they don't think I am "just holding out on the good stuff" by doing so. :)

3: I don't know if I already mentioned this but I accidentally broke open a door that was nailed shut. I didn't realize it was nailed shut, I thought it was just a bit stuck and I gave it a shove. The next thing I know there is the sound of splintered wood and screaming students who were standing next to the door that they all knewcould not be opened. This may further my reputation as a "strong man". I didn't get in any trouble over the door, it wasn't actually damaged in and of its self. They just had to nail a new board across the space between the frame and the metal door.

[SimonM]

I had a great time in Taiyuan. I also am in a rather novel position that I have to sort out. See, for really the first time ever, I find myself being in the position of having multiple women interested in dating me. I went out with my friend in Taiyuan, we had supper, went for a walk in the park and then got drunk and danced at a disco. I had a really great time with her. Now I am remaining a perfect gentleman, I have never been and will never be a player and neither is my girlfriend as of yet but I find that both women are attractive, interesting and fun to be around albeit quite different from each other.

Anyway other than my Saturday night I had a major shopping trip. My cell phone busted and I bought a new one the very next day (motorola c157t). I also picked up a pair of boxing gloves, bits and bobs for my halloween costume, various western food stuffs including really good dark chocolate (no cheese though :(), a nice jacket for wearing clubbing (also part of my halloween costume though at 415 RMB - on sale - you can bet I'm wearing it on more than just one day) and a new Reebok sweater.

Oh and a heap of DVDs. One of the DVDs will probably interest the guys over in the off topic forum. It is the new Jacky Chan movie. It is a Chinese movie and was just released this year; it is called "Myth". If you folks in the west are lucky a subtitled version might be available in a few years. ;) :D

I haven't watched it yet. Eileen was talking about it a while back so I might see if she is interested in watching it with me.

PS: I have a new skill that I never knew about. I'm a wicked shot with a rifle. At least if the Bee Bee rifles and electronic games you can use in China are at all a valid indicator. I was like totally dead-eye. I've never used a gun in my life so this surprised me somewhat. I still don't like guns though. Being able to aim one effectively isn't making me want to rush out and buy one.

[Mel]

So it seems that Eileen's insecurities were not so unfounded after all, eh Simon? You're flying high kid, and the air is very thin up there!;)

[SimonM]

Sorry I was going to post this earlier but some friends dropped by...

First I want to appologize for the delay in posting. I have had a very busy couple of weeks and there are three very valid reasons why it took me until now to get this post up:

1: I have been having internet problems off and on since about the 15th of October.

2: I have been showing the new FT the ropes. She got here on the 23rd of October. A nice old lady from South Africa.

3: I have been busy planning, cleaning, decorating, hosting and cleaning up after my first annual Halloween bash.

This is on top of my normal schedule of working, gong fu, shopping, spending time with Eileen, etc.

Ok. First I'll satisfy Mel's curiosity.

Honestly, I like Eileen a bit more, if she made it clear that she wanted me to be her BF the other girl would not even enter into the picture. Unfortunately Eileen some days acts like she thinks she is my girlfriend and some days like we are just good friends and I haven't gotten a lock on what she wants.

The other girl I mentioned in my previous post is a REALLY nice girl. She is also quite foreward, no mixed messages. Fortunately (at this time) I am only able to see the other girl when I go to Taiyuan whereas I see Eileen daily. If I have a lock on what Eileen wants by the next time I go to Taiyuan it will be much easier for me to proceed. In the meantime I am in a bit of a holding pattern.

And considering that such a predicament is one I have not ever faced before I must admit that, as confusing and headache inducing as the situation is, it has been good for the old self confidence. ;)

Anyway... Onto Gong Fu. We started San Da in class this week, FINALLY!!!

I must say that I exercised restraint; I only bloodied one nose on the first day. And after that I made sure that when scrapping I picked the toughest and most skilled guys in the group.

Chinese guys do have one quite frustrating aspect to their fighting style that is ubiquitous. Very non-aggressive. If you look like you are going to come at them they play a full defensive game. If you pull back and try to lure them into the defensive they turn around and assume the fight is over. :D

However most of the class was not impromptu matches on the soccer dust-bowl but was rater focus pad drills and footwork drills. Basics. What Master Chau called bread and butter material. I spent a large part of the class trading the focus pad with a guy who couldn't remember that you jab with the lead hand showing off my coaching skills and proving that you don't have to speak the same language to teach a person to keep their guard up when punching... Smack a guy lightly on the ear five or ten times and each time mime keeping your guard up and he begins to learn. ;)

For all of this I think that I impressed Sifu Zhang. As fun as it is Wushu is not my strong suit. And as interesting as it is I was hoping to move on from Taiji to something more aerobic. That is exactly what I got with San Da and my stupid fighting grin (the guys at NBDMA know what I am talking about) never left my face all class.

Next up: The new teacher. She is an older lady from south africa. We are not simmilar in any way BUT she is a kind woman and a forgiving neighbour. Today, when I appologized for the noise that my party generated last night, she said she could hardly hear it at all. Plus the school shifted all but one of my sections of Writing to her, leaving me with speaking and my beloved European Culture course (which I now have more sections of) so my timetable is much more to my liking now that she is here.

The halloween party: I expected 20 people, I got 50. At the busiest point I had about 35 in the living room (seating for six) and 15 in the bedroom (about 10 sitting on the edge of my bed). Eileen, Lake and my chinese teacher - Stone helped me to clean the night before, Stone helped me shop (sadly I shopped for 25 and so my guests ate and drank EVERYTHING I bought except for the Bai Jiu) and Eileen and Lake helped me to decorate. I haven't taken the decorations down yet because they are actually quite pretty. Streamers of fake, plastic, red maple leaves, wicker baskets full of cloth corn and halloween doodads that flash and laugh when they are jostled. I set up a spooky sounds file on my computer and lit the appartment entiely with candles. I also dressed in my halloween costume... I was going for a morpheus look so I donned mirror-shades, black dress pants, a black dress shirt with a crisp collar and low-key blue and gold stripes, a maroon silk tie (it says gucci made in italy on the back but at 35 RMB, 30 after bargaining, I have a feeling it is more likely gucci-immitation made in China), a long, trendy, jacket, a rather realistic plastic shot-gun that could fire BeeBees (except that I wisely unloaded it) and a Katana. I didn't want to cut my hair all off so I did the next-most-matrixey thing and used a lot of gel to style it into a tight, slicked-back do. Lake and Eileen dressed up as good and evil twins. They were wearing the same clothes and styled their hair identically but while Eileen carried around a stuffed pig all night (good twin) Lake wandered around with my bowie knife in her hands (evil twin). Then I let the guests in and told them a story about the origins of Halloween, ending by telling them that my flat was haunted by a ghost. Cue scream from the scary sounds machine (good timing that) and all my guests were sufficiently on edge. Then I switched to some good old-fashioned halloween music and got out drinks before begining to move around "hosting". After an hour we played bobbing for apples (it was a hit) and then, when enough people had left that we could see the screen, we put on a scary movie called "One Missed Call 2" a Japanese horror movie that was basically just Ringu with cell phones. Seriously, it was ultra derivative. However my guests were sufficiently frightened and the sound of gasping and jumping was a regular occurance during the frightening scenes.

Sadly Eileen fell ill half way through the party. She tried to tough it out but just had to make for home. She was still sick today but she got plenty of rest and was feeling well enough to stop by with Lake and Lakes BF to watch the film (which she missed) today. However it was a bit too scary for her so we left lake and her boyfriend (nice guy, doesn't speak a word of english) to watch the movie and Eileen and I went and watched the Simpsons instead. The jokes were all new for her and I think she enjoyed it... I picked a Homer-centric episode as they depend the most on physical comedy.

OK, time to go mix up a Bai Jiu and Sprite, settle down in my warm blankets to read a book and then catch some sleep.

[SimonM]

Today we started kicking in San Da class. After two hours of running, pushups, kicking drills and stretching my legs feel like they are about to fall off. I am also filthy because it was very dry and windy today... Dust! Dust!

However I am not certain I would stay standing in the shower right this second so I am taking a break to play some video games.

Ouch.:D

[SimonM]

Back again. I have been a bit busy of late as the end of the semester approaches. I taught my last class of the term yesterday and am now preparing exams.

Fortunately the PE department ends later so my Gong Fu classes continue and we have FINALLY strapped on gloves and head gear to begin hitting each other for real.

There is one bloke in my class I REALLY want to spar with. Unfortunately the folks around here still haven't gotten it through their heads that height is not the determining factor in a fight so they keep matching me with people who are not as skilled as him but who are tall. However tall guys in china don't have my combination of tall stature, stocky muscle and fatty padding. They are thin as rails and light as feathers. Combine this with the fact that many of these guys have NEVER been in a real fight and it's a bit of a disaster waiting to happen. In my first match (my second will be tomorow) I knocked over my opponent with a single punch... :o

What's worse, it was a spinning backfist, a move I'd never use in a real fight because it's so low-percenage! :eek:

After that he spent the rest of the match running around the ring trying to avoid me.

I just put up my Christmas tree but since all my presents are in a cabinet waiting to be sent home it looks a bit lonely - even with enough lights on it to make it look like a miniature sun.

It's a bit lonely here right now. I miss my family more accutely than I have in the past because of it being the hollidays. Also Eileen has been out of town all week and so my only company has been Helen and my students. Helen is a delightful woman but I crave companionship within my own general age bracket. Most of my students just want to hit me up for information about the exam when they visit and I have already had one houseguest breakdown in tears when she misinterpreted something I said and thought I was upset with her. See she had got me a gift, a lovely - oversized - Chinese knot. I visited with her for a small bit when another student showed up and I started telling that student about exam preparation. Now the first student is actually one of my best students in her grade but she is a freshman and so her English is far from perfect. I've had major plagirism problems with my third year students and I was telling the other student (a third-year) that if anyone cheated on their essay or on their exam I wouldn't hesitate to give them a 0% grade. I continued by saying that there was no guaranteed pass in any of my courses. The freshman misunderstood what I meant and thought I suspected her gift of being a bribe for a better mark on an exam. I thought no such thing but with the stress of exams looming and this being her first year away from home she suddenly broke into complete tears. I calmed her enough to find out what had so upset her and reassured her that I had not been even thinking about her gift when I had made these comments but I still felt terrible about the whole incident.

Sadly in Lishi the only people who CAN speak English are the students and teachers at LLHC (most of whom are either 5 years younger or 10 years older than me or are out of town on placement until tomorow) and a pair of restauranteurs who are good friends of mine but who are quite busy with work of their own at the moment.

And my Putonghua is still too poor to develop meaningful friendships with people who are incapable of speaking English. I do OK when I go shopping and I have learned some important basic phrases such as "what is this" and "I don't like it" but... Language acquisition takes time and I've only been here for 6 months.

[SimonM]

Wow! I've been trying to get on to KFM ever since new years day and I just managed it now.

Well, it's official, Eileen is now my girlfriend. We managed to reach that point over supper on New Years Eve and I have never been happier. :D :D :D

A few of my students got me work out equipment for a christmas gift so although I don't have gong fu classes I have been practicing on my own.

After some events that I heard about at various English corners I am considering starting a self-defense seminar for the students at our school.

That's about it really.

[Mel]

Congratulations, Simon.;)

[SimonM]

I thought you'd appreciate the update. ;)

[omarthefish]

I've been intentionally avoiding saying this because I thought it might be a bit mean spirited and I didn't want to rain on your parade but...

The one who is celebrating and getting congratulations all around right now for the new "girlfriend" status is Eilieen.

Everything so far has read like she has been the one seducing you. She took you home to meet the folks already which means that they are now all very excited at the idea that she seems to have managed to bag herself a foreigner.

It's not that true love doesn't exist between foreigners and Chinese girls but just be aware that you are essentially an eccentric billionare or a rock star. The minute you stepped on campus, half the female student body was evaluating their options. I haven't met Eileen and it's entirely possible you guys have something real but it is nearly impossible for the vast majority of mainland girls to see you as anything other than "a foreigner". That's a mix of good and bad but the main thing is that, and this is especially true if this is your first relationship in China, you and here are not so much in love with or attracted to each other as you are for each others countries. Your first "love" in China is more of a romance with the country than with the girl and as your relationship with the culture matures so will the kind of relationships you are able to have with it's citizens.

The VAST majority of these things do not end well. Your Chinese is probably not good enough to see it yet but if you go on Chinese discussion boards there are endless topics devoted to things like:

-what's the best way to snag a foreigner.
-what a gold digging **** some poster is for sleeping with a foreigner.
-my mixed blood kids are so cute..followed by massive flaming and insults for the "traitor to her country" for marrying a foreigner and lots of verbal attacks telling the original poster she shouldn't be so uppity and that she's not the first person to go abroad etc.

Just be warned and proceed with caution. You have no idea how many girls spend half their free time hanging out at Starbucks because that's where the foreign men go. In Xi'an, no starbucks so they spend their time at the Starbucks ripoff attatched to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Girls who speak English, unforntunately, are even more obsessed with "western fever". They pick it up in the Universities.

Good luck and watch out. ;)

[SimonM]

No offence taken. However my skills in Hanzi and Putonghua aside part of my attraction to Eileen is that she was different in that regard from a lot of the other folks I know.

She really didn't throw herself at me. It's taken me 4 months of work wooing her while dodging all the girls who WERE throwing themselves at me to get to the point where I was calling her my girlfriend.

Is she "The One"? I don't know. There are still many unknowns in our fledgling relationship.

Is she a gold-digger? I don't believe so.

How do I know? Well

1: I know a few gold-diggers. She doesn't act like them. If she is such she is at least much, much more clever than most.

2: I have a strong intuition. I tend to trust it. Doing so rarely steers me wrong.

She is heading back home for the holidays either tomorow or the day after so I took her out for dinner tonight. Because she didn't want to pick a place I chose one I knew she likes. She complained it was too expensive. I've had the gold digging types complain when I don't spend enough RIGHT NOW on them. My gut tells me that this isn't a more-clever-than-average ploy. It tells me she is on the level.

As for being an "eccentric rockstar" that hasn't lost it's charm for me yet, 6 months into my China stay. ;)

Seriously I appreciate the warning but I am not walking into this one blind. I've heard the stories, the good and the bad hundreds of times over at the other forum I frequent: www.daveseslcafe.com and have met the gold diggers in person before. Hell I've barely dodged them before.

If it ends badly than it does. For now I am a happy man and I will worry about tomorow when it comes. ;) :cool:

PS: One of these days I've got to get down to Xi'an. It's just a stones throw away after all. How is the weather over there now?

[Scott R. Brown]

I received similar advice when I met my wife. She is a Filipina. Intuitively I felt something immediately. I tempered my intuition with reason and took it slow. She is the finest woman I have ever met. She also treated my finances with respect and deferred any expensive gifts or outings. To her, time with me was what was more important and she is relatively unconcerned with material goods. What she wanted and wants is a long an happy marriage with someone she loves. Also she was a virgin and had a very close and protective family. Their actions demonstrateed to me they were concerned that she not be taken advantage of by an American. We had a constant chaperone when we first met. That impressed me! There may be a lot of gold diggers, but there are a few diamonds as well!

[SimonM]

Despite the fact I agree it's generally a good sign there is one down-side to an over-protective family. Eileen has been complaining that it's too cold up where she is. So I offered to take her somewhere warm for a week or so. But her mom said no. :( So instead I'm going to go up to Longqing and see if I can't check out one of the forges up that way.

[Scott R. Brown]

Yeah! That's not the only downside! ;)

But then think about if it was your own daughter.

[SimonM]

I completely understand but that just makes it worse in some ways.

If I didn't understand I could always just gripe about her awful mother but I realize her mother is not being awful, just trying to look out for her daughter. So I can't even ***** in good conscience. Eileen told me to go to Xihu while I am in Zhejiang...

I think that is West Lake.... I'll take some photos to share with her.

[Scott R. Brown]

Yes, it can be very frustrating especially when we come from a culture that is a bit more liberal with their girls. But even this liberality in western culture is relatively recent in historical terms. The pill as only has been around since the forties; prior to that all this concern was to provide protection from pregnancy. For you, as for me, it may just be they are trying to protect her in case you are a conniving round-eye attempting to take advantage of her virtue and then leave her.

In my case, many of the women in her family did not trust me, citing many anecdotal stories of women they knew taken advantage of by American men. Once I had proven my commitment, demonstrated a respect for the family rules and they observed my behavior as a gentleman they came to accept me. We are now happily married. My wife is a real doll!

It takes patients and it can get frustrating, but she sounds like a nice woman! Good Luck!!

[Mel]

Patience, Simon, patience. ;) Scott is right: It wasn't long ago that our own society was just as strict and watchful--and with good reason! And who knows? Our society may become strict and watchful again: The pill is turning out to be dramatically unsafe for many women (although the effects often don't show up for many years--we now have hindsight), and many religious groups are trying to ban anything and everything that will keep a woman "safe," preferring to breed her as a cow, so to speak.

Patience! You KNOW it will be worth it.:)

[SimonM]

And since I most certainly don't want to just take advantage of this wonderful lady I will exercise that patience and try to win the family over. Fortunately I am a patient person. :cool:

[SimonM]

It's now the year of the Dog.

I had a good spring festival eve. Drank beer and whiskey with an old friend from England, set off a bunch of fireworks and talked with Eileen on the phone. It's fun here on spring festival eve even if the air stinks of burnt gun powder.

My trip will experience a slight delay since bus service is discontinued for the next two days.

[PaiLumDreamer]

:D This is a really good read. It kinda gets me wanting to live in China as well.

Which probably wont happen for a good long time. Ill probably just need a ton of vacation-time there first.

BTW, did you ever get to fight that one guy you were wanting to fight?
From what ive read it seems like most of the Chinese guys dont really know how to fight :(

I also love to spar. I may not be very good, but its the one aspect of my martial arts that really gets me excited. Learning things is always great, but I want to put what I learn into a live situation. :P

Anyway, this gets me even more antsy about my trip. Its only about 36 days away, now. :D :D

[SimonM]

Not yet. After the last sparring class there were exam related scheduling conflicts. However there is always next term. In the meanwhile I'm doing solo practice until I can find someone nuts enough to spar with me.

The thing about China and fighters is that there are just SO **** MANY Chinese people. I'm sure there are very impressive fighters out there, as there are everywhere, it's just that there are a whole lot of people to hide them in. ;)

[PaiLumDreamer]

I guess I said that wrong. I mean the people you train with* dont seem to have much combat experience? You should ask your sifu to spar :D! I dunno about to protocol outside of our own style, but we always fight our instructors. Now that ive been introduced to something like that I dunno how much I could trust my teachers fighting skill if I didnt see it first hand; but I would understand if he didnt see that the same way. He might take it as a challenge? :eek:

Anyway, it sounds to me you need some sparring buddies. Start a Chinese Fight Club!

:D

I would go nuts with no sparring :(

[green_willow]

Not yet. After the last sparring class there were exam related scheduling conflicts. However there is always next term. In the meanwhile I'm doing solo practice until I can find someone nuts enough to spar with me.

The thing about China and fighters is that there are just SO **** MANY Chinese people. I'm sure there are very impressive fighters out there, as there are everywhere, it's just that there are a whole lot of people to hide them in. ;)

The traditional way is to get up on the stage at the town centre and say the traditional colonialist remarks. You'll sure get the best kung fu fighters from the darkest parts of china to challenge you. Be prepared because you might be getting yourself in too deep.

And if you don't get challengers - well stage a few kung fu fights with your usual 5 kung fu friends where you quickly whip their butts. and then wait........

gook luck:D

[SimonM]

The new rule in my household is this: no wielding two handed swords in the living room.

I just recently bought a Spring Autumn Pear Wood Sword (http://www.martialartsmart.net/455x50.html). I've wanted one of these swords forever and the opportunity for me to get one finally arose so I siezed it. However I don't believe in wall-hangers. If I own a sword it gets used. So what if it is 7 lbs? I'm big and heavy too!

But it's **** cold out today and I just got back from a trip way south of here so the cold is bitter... OK, I'll just practice inside...

Big Mistake

I brought a glass lamp down on my own head in the process of practicing a rather vigorous downward cut. It took me 1/2 an hour to clean up all the glass and I am still shocked that I didn't cut myself.

This is the second time in my life I've done something like this (the last time it was back in Canada with a staff) and I think this time I've learned my lesson. Two handed weapon practice is relegated to OUTSIDE regardless of the temperature.

[SimonM]

And I couldn't be happier. I've had a good vacation but it was too long and I spent WAY too much money. Now I have Eileen's birthday (today) and mine (thursday) and then a month of almost nil spending... :(

That aside the return of school means the return of Gong Fu classes (FINALLY) but I'd rather not wait through weeks and weeks of wushu and taiji before getting back into the San Da. So I'm thinking about talking to Zhang Yong Hong about starting a sportive fighting club.

My idea is this: Take the guys (and gals) from the PE dept. who are interested in continuing to pursue sportive fighting aside mabey one or two extra days a week for a combat-centered training session. Classes split between conditioning, technique drills and full contact sparring. Start with the (rather restrictive) San Da rules which we already played with last term but slowly add in more techniques (such as elbows, knees, a real clinch game and a ground game) as the participants become comfortable for more rigorous (and risky) training.

I DO want feedback on this idea but I'm going to start a second thread for that. Coach Ross and other people currently doing sportive combat training would be most welcome to give advice but no trolling please.

[SimonM]

Eileen is finally back in town. It's also her birthday today. A day ago she told me that she had never had a birthday party before. I intended to fix that and I succeeded. Her best friend and I took her to her favorite restaurant. Meanwhile Wang Bing (someone who has been very helpful throughout this whole situation, I often call her my "little sister" - no offence intended Sheil, you are still my flesh and blood baby sister, but it's a Chinese thing.)

Anyways...

She got together with a bunch of other friends of Eileen and headed over to the KTV bar with the birthday cake. As we finished supper I contacted Wang Bing and learned they were ready at that end so Lake and I walked Eileen over to the KTV bar for some karaoke, just the three of us, Eileen had never had any birthday party before, a surprise party nearly blew her stack. She was grinning from ear to ear (and blushing terribly) as we sang Happy Birthday in two languages.

After that we lit the cake with a candle that had a small firework in it and then played "happy birthday" over and over again. It was still singing two and a half hours later when I said goodnight to Eileen.

Then Wang Bing sprayed everyone with Budweiser. I sheilded Eileen from the worst of it... So Lake decided to put some icing on her nose. Everything after that becomes a bit of a cakey blur. About a half an hour later we all crammed into the bathroom to scrape the cake out of our eyes, ears and hair.

So we sang some songs, drank what was left of the beer, ate what was left of the cake and had a really good time!

It was a good night.

[SimonM]

So I'm at my birthday party and the phone rings. I go to answer and (yet again) there is nobody there. This has been happening all day. One to two rings and then hangup, same number each time, won't answer when I call back.

I tell my friends about this and one of them (Wenli) decides to tease my girlfriend and I by saying "mabey it's a pretty girl". Thanks Wenli.

Anyway we eventually decide to find out who it was who had been pranking me. So Wenli calls their number from her cellphone. It's a girl from one of my second year speaking classes. I don't know which because Wenli pretended to be calling for somebody else, sorry - wrong number, and all that jazz. Anyway shortly after this girl calls again, twice, and I am getting annoyed.

So I call her from my cell phone and let it ring about 20 times. No answer. But the girl calls back. Normally I answer the phone with "hello" but I've been drinking some beers and I'm also a bit annoyed with the prankster so I instead say:

"Wai?"

and she says a bunch of stuff in putonghua that I'm not making the effort to listen to.

"Wai?"

blah blah blah

"Shenme?"

blah blah blah

"Ni huei shoa lishi hua ma?" - of course I don't speak Lishi Hua but neither do most of my students. And in Lishi there are plenty of people (especially in the poorest income brackets) who don't speak any more than minimal Putonghua. They speak Lishi Hua almost exclusively. And my story seems to fit. At least she doesn't switch to English and call my bluff on the whole thing. Rather she hangs up, calls once more to my house phone five minutes later and then stopped calling.

I had a lot of fun with that call though and my friends and I had a HUGE laugh about the whole thing afterward. Eileen tells me my Chinese accent was passable enough that if the girl wasn't from Luliang than I might just have pulled it off over a cell phone connection. However the next time I have that class I think I'm going to find out who it is calling me constantly.

[CFT]

多小tien你想要? Duo xiao tien ni xiang yao? I think my pinyin might be a bit flawed here because I can't get the right character for tien to appear. Oh well, I know how to say it and how to draw it.Nice to read your adventures in China.

You probably know this by now. The pinyin you are looking for is "tian", meaning days?

[omarthefish]

I'm pretty sure from the context the character he wants is 钱 and he can't find it because the pinyin is wrong. It's "qian".

[CFT]

Ah! I'm sure you're right Omar.

But then shouldn't it be: Ni xiang yao duo xiao qian?
Original was English grammar rather than Chinese grammar.

[omarthefish]

A first year Chinese student using English grammar?!? :eek:

I've never heard of such a thing......

[CFT]

Heh heh :)

He seems to have settled in so well that I sometimes forget he is still working on the putonghua.

[SimonM]

Yup. My putonghua is far from perfect. Still the rate that I have progressed in it is enough to warrant warning some of my less apt ESL students that if I can speak better puntonghua than they speak English by the end of the semester they are not passing 2nd year speaking. :eek:

And I am aware of that particular mistake vis my crappy pinyin. I just haven't bothered going through old threads to fix spelling mistakes.

[SimonM]

Sorry for the lack of updates to the blog in the last while but I've been very busy. I'll try to get down most of it.

First of all I have had several trips. I went to Hangzhou, Longquan, I saw the yellow river and I visited the ancient city of Pingyao. I am planning on going to Mien Shan (one of the famous mountains of Shanxi) in a few weeks time along with some of my best friends.

Second I split from my girlfriend just under a week after my birthday. It finally caught up on her the rammifications of dating a foreigner and it was more than she was prepared to face. I was pretty broken up over it for a short while but am doing pretty much completely better now. I threw myself into my work and into my (now much expanded) social life.

Anyways onto happier news. I have gotten the San Da club off the ground... sort of... The first meeting had an attendance of two members and two more who wanted to make it but could not for various reasons. The second meeting is tomorow at 4 PM. One of the two guys who showed up has become a good friend of mine... his english name is Bill. Bill does Xingyi (along with an ample amount of Contemporary Wushu) and Bill also likes to spar. Today we hiked up to the park at the top of Feng Shan along with Li Xing (the other guy who joined the club and made it to the meeting) and Tomoko, one of my best friends and also one of the other two resident foreign teachers in Lishi. Anyways although our expressed purpose for visiting the mountaintop park was to play badminton it was too windy to do this and so Bill and I had a spar instead. I've almost broken him of the habit of trying to spin in order to evade hook punches... Almost. Tomoko brought her camera but I don't know if there will be any photos worth posting. If there are any of our match that show any actual action (I've noticed that people who are not quick on the shutter - like sports photographers - often miss the exchanges in a fight and you end up with a bunch of pictures of two guys with their dukes up looking for an opening) I'll post 'em when I get 'em.

Now the only problem is getting the inter-departmental bureaucratic snafu sorted out so that we can get access to the room we want (which is empty) and gear other than the one set of boxing gloves I own. I'm used to bare-knuckle fighting but:

A) I don't want to scare off all the interested parties and most people are NOT accustomed to full contact sparring without pads.

B) The school might have something to say about a semi-officially sanctioned martial arts club NOT using any sort of protective equipment while engaging in San Da / San Shou and (possibly) NHB style combat training. I know from experience that the school usually requires gloves, shin pads, and helmet at minimum and prefers people to wear a codpiece (not a cup, seriously a codpiece) and one of those stupid torso pads... I managed to get out of it with the excuse of 太小 (tai xiao) but I'm both taller and (to be blunt) fatter than most of the people around here.

Anyways... back to today's hike. I usually have gone up Feng Shan on my own and so I haven't had the opportunity to ask many questions regarding some of the interesting things on the large hill / small mountain other than the park. The first item that caught my interest was a walled enclosure containing several yurts. It turns out that in the summer it is run as a Mongolian restaurant and banquet center as well as a horse-riding attraction... Sort of like a Chinese Medaeval Times.

After that we went to a rather odd building that I had passed several times. It was a large, empty looking building with a large plaque out front. It is set behind a high wall and has a cast iron gate woven with vines which sported very large, sharp thorns. Inside a pair of rather vicious guard dogs roamed barking their ****-fool heads off at anyone who came within their line of sight. Today I had Chinese friends with me and so when I asked them to ask the caretaker what the building was for they did one better and got us a tour.

Turns out that it was a war memorial. Behind the building was a small cemetery featuring several graves to the unknown soldier. Out front was the plaque which is now so worn that it is difficult even for Chinese people to read and a large bas-relief in rather typical Chinese post-Mao style.

Inside the memorial building are a group of murals featuring events that happened in the Luliang prefecture during the tumultuous period of Chinese history between the start of the war with the Japanese and the eventual victory of the communist party over everyone else. Most of the murals depicted scenes of the China/Japan war including such events as when 200 people were puportedly burned alive by the Japanese soldiers and another time when a Japanese commander was ambushed by a small force of Chinese soldiers while he sat outside having a cup of wine.

If the caretaker was aware that one of our companions was Japanese she certainly didn't seem to care.

We then descended Feng Shan by the steep and precarious east path (much more taxing than the stairs on the west side of the hill/mountain) and went to have some lunch at one of the multitudinous restaurants in Lishi.

After lunch I went home and slept for a while. I was bushed between the mountaineering, the attempted badminton and the gong fu.

Later in the day I went out with a friend of mine for supper and I ran into Helen (the third foreign teacher at LLHC) and Wang Bing at the restaurant as we were ordering. We had a nice supper, did a spot of shopping and headed home where we watched a movie (Get Shorty).

All in all a good day.

Now a few days back I celebrated St. Patrick's Day. I got too drunk and ended up singing U2 songs at the table. Fortunately my friends (though neither as drunk nor as Irish as myself) were a little tipsy so they didn't mind. One of the advantages of being a foreigner is that you can get away with occasional eccentric behaviour as long as it is harmless because you are a foreigner and everyone knows us foreigners are a bit crazy anyway. :D

One last thing. Yesterday I learned that I also (apparently) look really good in glasses. See Li Xing broke his frames yesterday and so he, Tomoko and I went to the optometrists to get them replaced. While he was trying on frames he wanted a second opinion about the comfort of one pair. Tomoko tried them and then I did. Now I have 20/20 vision so I don't need glasses. Even the mildest perscription lenses (even reading glasses) give me a terrible headache but these just had non-perscription lenses in them since they were dummy-frames. According to Li Xing and Tomoko both the glasses really set off the good qualities of my face. Well I guess if I ever do need glasses (my father started using glasses regularly around 50 and my mother has pretty much her whole life) I at least can look forward to the fact that I won't look like an idiot. :p

[SimonM]

Some friends of mine and I decided to go to a popular cave system called White Horse Cave to do some amateur exploring this last sunday. We got into the bus at 7:00 AM and departed (prior to breakfeast) to the cave. Well the road was the worst I have ever ridden on. A dirt road would have been a hundred times better. See this one had been paved... once... my guess would be that it was done either by the japanese during WWII or at the latest during the great leap forward. Since it's long-ago day of paving it had never seen proper maintenance and had seen far too many over-loaded coal trucks. The end result was that the natural processes of entropy had taken over and the road was nothing but a series of pot-holes and large stones. After one hour on this cruel track we eventually made our way to the dirt road that lead to White Horse Cave. It was a much easier stage to our trek.

When we arrived at the gate to the park that contained the cave we found it locked. Our driver honked his horn and the gate keeper came out. He told us that we could not go to the cave because there was too much risk of forest fires in the region and that we would have to come back in April. We tried hard to convince him to let us in but it was in vain.

Now we had paid the driver 150 RMB to drive us there and back and we were ****ed if all we had to show for our expense was two trips along a terrible stretch of semi-paved road. So we discussed what we would do next. In the end we decided to go to Bei Wudan Shan.

Bei Wudan Shan (or the northern mountain of the perfect warrior) is a sacred mountain of Taoism within Shanxi.

As one website says:

" The main hall is the Hall of the Mysterious Black Heaven on the top of the mountain worshiping the bronze statue of the Great Perfect Warrior Emperor or Highest Emperor of the Mysterious Northern Heaven " - See here for complete text. (http://www.eng.taoism.org.hk/general-daoism/grotto-heavens&blissful-realms/pg1-5-6-80.asp#txt)

The mountain is roughly 1470 meters tall.

It cost us an extra hundred kuai to return to Lishi and then to take the driver to Bei Wudan and back but this was (in our eyes) better than doing nothing and still paying the driver for having driven us out to where we did not do anything and back. We stopped in Lishi to get film and breakfeas (binzi and bottles of iced tea) and then continued (on a much nicer road) to Bei Wudan.

We arrived at the gate to Bei Wudan Shan Park and paid the entry fee and then we set off on foot along the long and winding road over the foothill prior to Bei Wudan. We had gone a short way (mabey 1 kilometer) when we met a man driving a truck. He was kind enough to agree to take us over the foothill and to the base of the stairway ascending the mountain. So we all piled into the back of the pickup truck and with Li Xing (a friend of mine from the San Da club) and I standing in the bed of the pickup, clinging to the roof, we began a quick trip over the roughly 10 kilometer road from the gate to the foot of the steps.

We passed by the statue which capped the foothill (a white stone statue depicting a man holding a sword with a snake fighting a dog at his feet) and made it to the foot of the stairs. Then we began to climb. The first staircase of Bei Wudan is one of the shortest of it's many stairs. However it is a rather steep stair and so by the time we reached the first landing we were beginning to realize that climbing a real mountain would be a bit more strenuous than taking a stroll on Feng Shan in Lishi. After the first stair is a long and rather gently climbing path followed by the difficult second stair. The second stair is one of the two longest stairs at Bei Wudan and also one of the steeper stairs. About half way up we paused to take photographs on a large boulder overlooking a deep chasm and on a rock face somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees steep. Then we proceeded up this and the third stair.

The third stair occasionally had railings. This was a welcome addition because by this time a very strong wind had picked up and we were all feeling the worse for long climbing. After the third stair the fourth was rather short. Then there was a brief staircase which was very shallow and had very wide steps... Considering that my feet were nearly twice as long as some of the more narrow steps were wide this was a very welcome change. There was then a brief down-stair leading into a small shaded place beside a vertical rock face to the right some ten or twenty feet high.

The shaded spot was heavily treed to the left and so between the trees and the rock wall the shade was nearly perpetual. It was here we saw the first ice patch of the day. This was an indication that we were at a rather high altitude.

After this we came to a place where the path split. To one side was a staircase going down so steeply that it looked like a cliff until you walked right to the edge. At the base of this stair was a small temple. We decided not to go to visit this place but instead took the next staircase (which had a name including the character 天 - tian. I was unsurprised by this considering the steepness and height of the stair.)

After that stair was a brief level place where a few vendors had set up shop and another stair going up through a thin path carved through a beautiful forested stretch of the mountain. We climbed this stair and passed around a detour where the staircase had been rerouted in recent years before reaching the staircase leading up to the summit. We paused to look at a sword one of the vendors was selling. It was a piece of crap and I decided against buying it. Then we ascended the stairs to the temple it's self. Of course upon reaching the huge, walled enclosure we found an unwelcome surprise... Another staircase!!!!! We had finally reached the summit of Bei Wudan Shan.

We spent about an hour buying trinkets and taking photographs in the temple at the summit one of my friends decided to pray to the god of the temple (I think based on the premise that since she had climbed all the way up here she might as well anyway since she wasn't quite certain who the god of the temple was) and then we decided to head back. However one of my friends (my "little sister" Wang Bing) was getting very tired. It was then that her boyfriend said words that anyone doing amateur mountaineering should dread...

I know a short cut.

We should have guessed by the way that the "short cut" moved AWAY from the foot of the stair to the mountain that it would have been longer except I was not overly concerned with how fast we returned to the car and the person who most wanted to get back quickly was the one pushing to go that route.

I am (in retrospect) glad that we took the long way around to go back because although the stairs we climbed were harrowing, narrow, steep and poorly maintained